


The depiction and use of Torture on TV Shows - Specifically Torchwood Episode Sleeper

by shadowkat67



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Battlestar Galactica References, Episode Related, Episode Review, Essays, Meta, Multi, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-02
Updated: 2008-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67





	The depiction and use of Torture on TV Shows - Specifically Torchwood Episode Sleeper

Just finished watching _"Sleeper"_ \- episode 2.2 of **Torchwood**.

The main theme of the episode is a traditional and somewhat universal sci-fi one going all the way back to HG Wells. What does it mean to be human? This by the way is the main theme of BattleStar Galatica, which may explain why it did a better job with similar issues. 24 also explores these issues just not as realistically as BSG in my opinion. OR as well. Which is why I gave up on 24 finally.

In Sleeper, we are introduced to a black woman named Beth who is in love with a white guy, whose name I can't remember for some reason - I think it may be Charlie? Too lazy to go back and check. Her race is not really an issue in the episode nor for that matter is her gender. At least I don't think it is. It would be interesting - as purely a social psychology experiment, to reshoot the episode with a white man in the role of Beth and see how people react to it. At any rate, the characters do not comment on it directly. Beth and her fiance (Charlie) have been robbed. During the robbery, three of the robbers were killed, Charlie was knocked unconscious, Beth has no memory of anything, and one robber is left severley injured. Their wounds are odd. Enter Torchwood.

Gwen takes an instant liking to Beth. Jack does not. Jack and Gwen are the two characters being compared here - they are the leaders of the team. Jack decides after some initial questioning of the dying robber and Beth's fiance, who was knocked out - that Beth must have done it. Also - that she may not be human and is an alien. He may even suspect what type of alien, but he keeps this information close to his vest. The guy has serious trust issues. So they convince her to be questioned at the Torchwood facility and undergo some tests. Owen attempts to take a blood sample - but nothing will pierce her skin, everything he tries breaks. Jack takes this as evidence that she is an alien and decides to take a rather harsh approach against Gwen's wishes and interrogates the poor woman. He goes so far as to use a mind-probe device that we are told by Ianto has killed people that Jack has used it on in the past, often causing their heads to explode rather painfully. It is a rather funny exchange - if you like black or gallows comedy (which I do) as well as an insightful one into Jack's character. Beth asks if the mind-probe is painful. Jack doesn't lie to her - he says it is. And does not stop the procedure even when Gwen begs him to, until Beth literally passes out from the pain and becomes the alien. He feels justified by the end result - the torture gives him the information he seeks. (She is revealed to be an alien, worse a sleeper agent from a group of nasty aliens who like to invade and destroy planets - this sounds remarkably familar, wait it is - we just saw a similar storyline on Doctor Who not that long ago.)

This is the part that bugs me (not the alien bit - the torture bit). Because in reality, this seldom happens as was so well depicted/examined in both BattleStar Galatica and Star Trek The Next Generation, not to mention Lost. People will say anything under the pain or threat of torture to escape it. Social Psychology experiments have been conducted to prove this. It's also been proven that good people will torture someone if they think it will save the world or better the person or even for the good of science. Also the truth is a malleable concept. People don't always know what it is - as was shown by this episode - Beth truly did not know she was an alien. And in the end, she takes actions that are in some ways more humane than Jack's. Sure the mind-probe successfully pulls it out of her, but did it activate her or was she active before it or would she have become active regardless? Did torturing her bring it about? Did torturing her and making her aware of it - aid in helping her stay human longer? Here, my guess is that the torture merely provided Torchwood with the information necessary to try and stop her, and if they hadn't done it, they would have risked much more. A message, I have serious issues with. I much prefer BSG's approach - where they show us how torture doesn't result in anything but pain and misery and cannot be easily rationalized. It does not provide us with useful information. And makes the torturer or the people condoning the torture, little more than monsters for doing it. Stripping us of our humanity. Damaging them beyond repair. Starbuck, Roslyn, and Admirial Cain are impaired by the pain they inflict on their cylon captives. It hurts them almost as much as it hurts the cylons, they also at some point in the series, not long after they've inflicted the torture, find themselves ironically at the mercy of their victims.

To give Torchwood credit - it does try to get across the same message. Gwen tells Beth that she's not a monster. That she is human. What makes her human is her actions and her mind, not her biology. Jack seems to flinch a bit as Gwen states it. And we wonder who is the less human here - Jack with his best intentions or Beth who is struggling against the alien technology.

But the message is diluted a bit - by another interlocking theme - Beth's feeling of not fitting in, of being "other" or "alien" - is based upon the fact that she is a monster alien killing machine. A sleeper cell. BattleStar Galatica handled this a lot better in its first season with the character of Sharon, who like Beth, was a sleeper cell - a cylon programmed to kill, she didn't know what she was, she fought against it. And ends up shooting the Admirial - a father figure to her, hating herself the whole time. Am I a monster, she asks herself, or am I human? BSG doesn't stop there. We are introduced to another Sharon - on Caprica, who has no human memories, but falls in love with a human, becomes pregnant by him, and takes up the human cause. Both become defined by their actions. Then we meet Admiral Cain who uses torture as both punishment and means to obtain information. The more she does it, the less human she becomes, and the more human her victim, the cylon she is torturing becomes. The cylon who was once her lover, and ends up being her killer.

In BSG - the torture, much like Torchwood, is justified - as an act of war or an act necessitated by war. Just as the acts of torture our own governments currently engage in to pry information from suspected terrorists is considered justified by the fact that we are at war. Just as the acts of torture during World War II, Vietnam, Korea, WWI, American Revolution, Napoleanic Wars, etc were justified. Human beings have been torturing each other since we figured out how to beat one another over the head with a stick. And since we do not want to think of ourselves as monsters and do have a conscience, we justify it. OR hunt ways to do so. There is no justification. Hate to tell you that. But there isn't. People who have done it - have said as much. People who have experienced it, have too. I've worked with lie detector tests and know that those are highly unreliable. The problem with getting the truth out of someone is you first have to determine if they know what it is. People are very good at lying to themselves.

Another tv show that has done a really good job of examining the pros and cons of torture is _Lost_. Lost depicted numerous characters getting tortured and showed rather clearly that not a bit of truth could be extricated from it. Ben certainly didn't release any info when Sayid tortures him. Nor for that matter did Sawyer. If anything it just resulted in twisting Sayid's soul that much more.

 _Torchwood_ unfortunately appears to take 24's route regarding the issue - which is the one we want to believe. But is not true. 24 is a lot worse than Torchwood. That show depicts the hero torturing villians as a matter of course and the only way to elicit necessary information. Each time he's rewarded and can within the hour save the world. _24_ may be the most unrealistic tv series I've seen next to _Alias_ , which also depicted torture as an effective means of eliciting information. _La Femme Nikita_ \- not so much. In it, the characters had to be dosed with a truth serum to get anything out of them. And often lied. _Buffy_ on the other hand - showed that torture was effective even if it was wrong. As did _Angel_. In both those series - villians that were tortured, quickly told the heroes exactly what they needed to know. You realize as you watch them how little the writers know about the subject. _Firefly_ questioned the use of it a bit more and showed that it was not effective. So, it is hard to be too critical of the writers of Torchwood for doing more or less the same things as many others have done - Buffy, Angel, 24, Alias, even Doctor Who.

It's become so prevalent in our media that we are almost becoming desensitized to it. One of the problems with living in the information age is that we have access to so much information on a daily basis. We are bombarded with it. People will say - I don't remember there being that much torture in my day. Heck, of course there was. You just didn't have access to the information back then. And it is hard sometimes to disseminate the information, to know what is true and what is not. I don't know about you, but I get tired of it at times. There are times, that I just want to block it all out. Information overload. So in that respect, I sort of wish tv shows like 24, Prison Break, Heroes, Torchwood, and Supernatural would stop with all the torture. Or at the very least depict it in a realistic manner. I think Heroes and Torchwood are attempting to depict it in a manner that tells us something about the characters, furthers their arcs. HRG in Heroes who is clearly a huge fan of torture - is suffering the consequences and has learned it does not result in what you want. He sacrifices a great deal to protect his daughter, Claire, from the torture that another Company operative's daughter is subjected to - a torture that twists this little girl's soul. In Torchwood - it shows us who Jack is, that he may not be as different from the sociopathic John Hart as he wants us to believe. He's not the dashing hero he wants to be. Gwen sees that clearly as she attempts to protect Beth from Jack's ruthless ends justify the means approach. She states as much. Warning him in a matter of speaking of the cost to his own humanity. It also shows us who the others are by their reactions. It is not as well-written or deftly done as Heroes or Lost, so the depiction is bit on the trite side of the fence.

I give the writers credit for wrestling with these issues. Not everyone does. Too often torture is shown as entertainment, or an easy way to get info - a shortcut. Becoming almost a cliche. I've read too many comics and suspense thrillers and seen too many, not to notice this. After a while, I found that I couldn't watch it any more. It is why I can't watch Criminal Minds, and was unable to get into Tim Minear's The Inside. It's also why I gave up on 24 and Prison Break. I can't watch the Torture Porn horror films either - starting with Saw and ending with Hostel. They make me wince and squirm. Supernatural at least shows how the torture when it is used strips the heroes a bit of their own humanity - so I can handle that. And Torchwood - did somewhat the same thing - depicting how disturbing this was. The shows that don't are oddly the ones that are not considered sci-fi or fantasy, that are in the "suspense-thriller" or "procedural" category. Bones - bugged me a great deal last year when they did it. I found the episode unbelievable and difficult to watch - far more so than an episode of BattleStar Galatica. Why? Because it dealt with the topic in a blase or inconsequential way, while BSG dealt with it as a problem and something we need to think about it. Not just fluff off.

Overall? I enjoyed the episode not enough to rewatch, but it was interesting. And I liked the character of Beth. I'm also finding that I'm liking the supporting characters - Gwen, Tosh, Owen, and Ianto more and more as time goes on. Question for anyone from the UK reading this - is Gwen's accent Welsh? It sounds Welsh to me. But the last time I heard true Welsh was in 1988, which is a looong time ago. So am uncertain. Jack's is clearly American, which is an interesting choice. While Owen's and Tosh's are regular English - or what I usually hear when I watch BBC shows. Marsters was similar to theirs, with a bit of North London twang, reminding me of Anthony Stewart Head. I'm not great with accents, so may be completely off on that. Find the whole alien invasion subplot to be a bit on the tired side. Sci-fi has sort of overdone that plotline, to the point in which it is becoming very close to a cliche. Doctor Who has only had five alien invasions that I've counted in the last three seasons of that series. X-Files had one on-going invasion. Then there was the sci-fi series - Invasion. And of course all those cheesy 1950s films. Followed by the sappy 1980s ones about nice aliens landing on earth. Can't we think of anything new and a little less predictable? This plot line has been done to death. I find the whole Time Agent who steals from planets subplot introduced in the prior episode far more intriguing - and no that's not just because Marsters happens to play the thieving Time Agent, but rather that I can't predict the outcome ahead of time and find the possibilities more intriguing, not to mention more fun.

The problem with sci-fi is it has a tendency to go over old ground. The themes I've gotten sick of? Alien invasions. Killer monsters from outerspace or on earth. Aliens disguised as humans. Nice fluffy aliens being killed or experimented on by evil human goverment agencies. Which may explain why the X-Files and Rosewell were not my favorite shows and why I enjoyed Farscape. So far Torchwood has been doing new things. We shall see if it continues to do so or takes an annoying detour into old X-Files territory.


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